A material for use in the transfer of a light-sensitive resin layer to a base substrate is disclosed, for example, in JP-B-56-40824 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,693) (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an "examined Japanese patent publication"). This transfer material is applicable to the production of printed circuits, forme (printing plate) and the like. It comprises a support, a separation layer and a photopolymerization layer. For the purpose of image formation, the photopolymerization layer of the material is contacted with a base substrate, the support is peeled off and then exposure and development are conducted through the separation layer to form an image on the base substrate. In this instance, the separation layer acts as a barrier to prevent permeation of oxygen which permits exposure to be conducted efficiently in the air, without reducing resolution because of its extreme thinness of about 0.5 to 5 .mu.m. However, in spite of this thinness of the separation layer, transfer of the prior art material becomes inappropriate when a base substrate to be transferred has an irregular surface and an extremely thin photopolymerization layer is transferred on the substrate, because bubbles and the like are trapped in the space between the photopolymerization layer and the base substrate.
A transfer material in which an intermediate layer such as a polyvinyl alcohol derivative is interposed between a support and a light-sensitive resin layer is disclosed in JP-A-2-213849 (corresponding to EP-A-373438) (the term "JP-A" and "EP-A" as used herein mean an "unexamined published Japanese patent application" and an "unexamined published European patent application," respectively). This transfer material was developed with the object of improving the separability from a temporary support and dissolution characteristics. This published application does not disclose transferability of the material to a base substrate where the surface has an irregularity. From a practical standpoint, this transfer material exhibits incomplete transferability and therefore tends to entrap bubbles when the surface of a base substrate has an irregularity.